The Grace of Shame: 7 Ways the Church Has Failed to Love Homosexuals

By Tim Bayly, Joseph Bayly and Jürgen von Hagen

For this generation of Christians in the western world, sexuality is the battle being waged in the culture. Traditional marriage is out the window and every manner of sexual perversity is being pushed as good and healthy and normal on TV, in the movies, by the mainstream media, and by the fathers of our city and nation. At the forefront

• Language: English
• Publisher: Warhorn Media
• Release date: Sep 4, 2017
• ISBN: 9781940017174

Tim Bayly

Tim Bayly has been married to his wife, Mary Lee, for more than forty years. They have five children and twenty-nine grandchildren (for now). Since 1996, Tim has served as senior pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Bloomington, Indiana. He is the author of Daddy Tried and Church Reformed, and co-author of Elders Reformed and The Grace of Shame.

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The Authors

Tim Bayly and his wife Mary Lee have five children and twenty-some grandchildren. Tim is the author of Daddy Tried: Overcoming the Failures of Fatherhood. He has his BA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Since 1996, Tim has served as senior pastor of Clearnote Church, Bloomington.

Joseph Bayly and his wife Heidi have five children. After planting Clearnote Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, Joseph and Heidi moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where they are working to plant Christ Church. Joseph has his BA from Vanderbilt University and his BDiv from Clearnote Pastors College.

Jürgen von Hagen and his wife Ilse have four children. Jürgen recently completed six years as vice rector of the University of Bonn, where he continues as professor of economics. A research fellow of London’s Centre for Economic Policy Research, Jürgen is a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Federal Minister of Economics and Technology in Germany and vice chair of the Portuguese Fiscal Council. He has been a consultant to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve Board, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the governments of several sovereign nations. Jürgen is senior pastor of Free Evangelical Church in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

To all the

pastors, elders, and deacons

who are not ashamed

of Jesus’ words

I have friends that are gay, and we study the Bible together.

Prince

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.

Pope Francis

Heterosexuality does not get you to heaven, so how in the world could homosexuality send you to hell?

Tim Keller

They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially,

Saying, Peace, peace,

But there is no peace.

Jeremiah 6:14

    Contents       

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Words Matter

1. Some Personal History

2. The Church Yesterday

3. Error 1: Removing the Sin of Effeminacy (Part 1)

4. Error 1: Removing the Sin of Effeminacy (Part 2)

5. Error 2: The Gay Christian Error

6. Error 3: The Godliness Is Not Heterosexuality Error

7. Error 4: The Sexual Orientation Error

8. Error 5: The Reparative Therapy Error

9. Error 6: The Such Are Some of You Error

10. Error 7: The Living Out Error

11. Leading Homosexuals to Repentance

12. The Way Forward

Postscript: The Nashville Statement

Further Reading

Publication Info

    Acknowledgments       

First, we thank our wives, Mary Lee Bayly, Heidi Bayly, and Ilse von Hagen. Mary Lee’s faith in this project in particular brought this book through some very difficult moments. From the first, she was the one who most believed it was needed. Then, at critical junctures, when we were ready to give up, she kept saying, You have to finish this book and get it out there. People need it.

Houses and wealth are an inheritance from fathers,

But a prudent wife is from the

Lord

.¹

We thank Him for the beautiful gift He gave to each one of us.

Second, we thank the elders and pastors of Clearnote Church, Bloomington, and Clearnote Fellowship. These brothers have not flinched in their support of this tough word to the church today. The contemplation of the book’s reception has pained them as much as it has us, but they have been steady in their affirmation of the necessity of the book for the salvation of sinners and the protection of the church. Our gratitude to God for His provision of these men and their wives and children is deep.

Third, there are many others who have given their time to this work, and without any payment: our reader David Canfield, our more-than-copyeditor and typesetter Alex McNeilly, our designer Ben Crum, our conceptual editors and podcast producers Nathan Alberson and Jake Mentzel,² and our wise counselor Tina Jacobson.

Finally, we thank our brothers and sisters in Christ who have led and joined us in living lives of repentance for sexual sin—particularly those who have repented of the sexual sins of sodomy and lesbianism. May God bless and keep you in His grace.

---

1. Proverbs 19:14.

2. The podcast based on this book is called The World We Made.

Retain the standard of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 1:13

    Introduction       

Words Matter

First, a brief word about words so you’ll understand the way this book uses them.

Historic Christian faith is committed to being nothing new. Orthodox Christians are orthodox because they are committed to remaining old—two thousand years old, to be exact—in their faith and doctrine. They hold to the plain teaching of Scripture.

God commands the shepherds of His flock to flee the new and novel, clinging to the old and revealed. Pastors and elders are God’s conservation officers, called to guard every truth the Holy Spirit has inspired in every word of Scripture. Verse after verse hammers home this truth:

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.¹

Guard, through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.²

For the overseer must be above reproach . . . , holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.³

Many pastors today have decided the best way to conserve God’s truth is to dispense with the words God uses in Scripture. They think confessing the truths of Scripture in the words of Scripture doesn’t work anymore.

The authors of this book repudiate these tactics. For two thousand years orthodox Christians have confessed that it’s not just the underlying truths of Scripture that are inspired by God, but the very words Scripture uses to declare those truths. Yes, those words were written by men, but every one of them is inspired by God. God Himself testifies, all Scripture is inspired by God,⁴ so it is impossible to separate God’s truths from God’s words in Scripture.

We are all tempted to leave behind the words of Scripture that condemn our generation’s pet sins. Today, sexual sins such as effeminacy, sodomy, and lesbianism are very popular, so even pastors in conservative churches are working to show how sensitive and understanding they are of these sins and those who commit them. One of the principle ways they demonstrate this sensitivity is by avoiding the very words God uses to condemn these sins.

We would never say so, but our abandonment of God’s words condemning these sins shows that we think God was wrong to shame these sinners. That God shouldn’t have been so hard on them in His language and His judgments recorded in the Bible.

Our generation is precious with our language and there are few places we’ve changed our language more than the way we speak of sexual sin. We kill God’s truth by avoiding God’s words, then we justify our shame at God’s words by appealing to the pain of sexual minorities. We think gays and bisexuals are victims and shouldn’t have the suffering of minority status compounded by judgmental, self-righteous Christians who use insensitive language. Which is to say, biblical language.

But consider the infinite wisdom of God!

Before the world began, God knew what our own time would be like and He inspired the words of His Word for us. The problem isn’t God or His words.

The problem is us.

Lacking faith, we repudiate God’s Word in order to avoid what we think of as unnecessary offense. None of our changes in wording seem like a big deal at the time, but as we leave each word behind, we cast ourselves further adrift from our divine anchor which is the Word of God that is eternally true. Instead of depending upon the power of the Holy Spirit, we depend upon ourselves, forgetting what Jesus said:

For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.⁵

This book is our plea for the church to return to the words and truths of Scripture in her loving witness to the effeminate, sodomites, women who lie with other women, and similar abominations.⁶ If Christian preaching is to be blessed with the power of the Holy Spirit, it must be preaching that wields faithfully the Sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.⁷

If we do this work, if we return to the words and truths of Scripture, we’ll begin to really ask the question, Who loves sinners? Does the church? Does it really love them? Does it love them enough to name their sin and call them to repentance?

What about the effeminate, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals? Does the church love these men and women enough to name their sin and call them to repentance?

That mention of repentance doesn’t go down well with us. The world has hammered it into our heads that calling gays to repentance is hate speech.

You’re just talking about gays’ and lesbians’ need to repent because you don’t like them. You want to think you’re better than they are. Haven’t we gotten past this Us vs. Them thing yet? What about your own sin? Aren’t you a sinner too? Why don’t you try calling yourself to repentance?

Every gay man is not an alley cat, you know. Some of them are in lifelong loving and monogamous relationships. Some are even celibate! You think this is what Jesus would do? He loved sinners, and hung with the downtrodden and disenfranchised, didn’t He? You think he wants us to go around telling gays and lesbians to repent or they’ll burn in hell? Seriously?

Jesus came to save sinners, and He called them to repent out of His love for them.

If we follow Jesus today, we will also love sinners and call them to repent.

When He spoke to the woman at the well, our Savior gave us an example of how to love sinners. After asking her for a drink, Jesus didn’t feign ignorance of her sin. Instead, He said to her, Go, call your husband and come here.

The Samaritan woman responded, I have no husband, but Jesus kept at it:

You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.⁸

Jesus saw the Samaritan woman’s wound and brought it out in the open so she could be healed. Thus when she believed in Jesus, this was the testimony she took back to all the men of her village: Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done.⁹

None of the men listening to her were confused about what she meant by all the things that I have done. They knew what she had done, so when they went with her to listen to Jesus they went to hear a man who would expose their sins. They went to hear a man who would prove His love for sinners by showing them their sin and calling them to repentance and faith.

With the effeminate, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals, the church today must have the faith to follow Jesus’ example.

Today, every Christian is being called to choose between the wide path of acceptance by the world and the narrow path of calling sexual sinners to repentance. Certainly we’ll be misunderstood, scorned, and persecuted, but this is how Jesus suffered before us. No generation of Christians has ever escaped taking up their cross in following Jesus. He bore the cross first, so shouldn’t we bear it with Him?

This refusal to speak God’s words to sinners, using His language He has given us in His Word, is itself sin. When we are ashamed of God’s words, we betray our duty. If we have any compassion for the effeminate, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals, we must return to speaking biblically about their sin and temptations. Pastors and elders particularly must not rob them of repentance by refusing to use the words God uses about their sin.

Some time back, one of our most admired pastors in North America was speaking at his denominational seminary to the men preparing to be pastors. When a student asked if he preached on homosexuality, he responded:

I think the time is probably coming in which we’re going to have to be more public in how we talk about homosexuality. And I haven’t—I’m actually thinking quite a lot about it, as to how I will go about it, or how we should go about it, but I’m not prepared to give you, like, three bullet points yet. . . .

. . . For me to do teaching in the worship service—"I am now going to give you the

Reviews for The Grace of Shame

[Jonathan Kyser · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Necessary perspective for anyone interested in loving homosexuals from a biblical perspective, from a man with experience pastoring former homosexuals.

[A Caldwell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well written, easy to read, and very informative! It was helpful in understanding Biblical love towards homosexuals.